Format Text with Fonts and Colors

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About this lesson

Learn how to apply bold, italic, underline and Drop Caps styles to text.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Format Text with Fonts and Colors.docx
59.1 KB Format Text with Fonts and Colors - Solution.docx
111.4 KB

Quick reference

Format Text With Fonts And Colors

How to format text with bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and Drop Caps styles

When to use

Formatting text is a very common feature in Word and makes your text stand out.

Instructions

  1. Click the line of text that you want to apply a Format to.
  2. Click the HOME ribbon and move the mouse to the FONT group.
  3. Click any of the buttons within the FONT group to see the effect on the selected text.

Tips:

The format only applies to the SELECTED text.  Make sure you have told the computer what you want it to do by clicking, dragging, and selecting the text.

Double click a word to select one word.

Triple click a paragraph to select a full paragraph.

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  • 00:05 Hello. In this lesson,
  • 00:06 I wanna show you how to format text with fonts and colors.
  • 00:08 It's a wonderful feature, but there is one rule you need to follow.
  • 00:12 The computer only does what you tell it to.
  • 00:15 Notice my insertion point is flashing at the beginning of the sentence.
  • 00:18 If I apply font styles and colors here, nothing will happen.
  • 00:22 You have to tell the computer what you want it to apply to,
  • 00:25 which means you have to click and drag and select.
  • 00:28 Now I could double-click and that's just gonna select the word, but
  • 00:31 I want the whole line.
  • 00:32 So, I can triple-click and it'll get the whole line or I can come into
  • 00:37 the left margin and click with my left arrow and that will select the line.
  • 00:42 But regardless, you are in control of what the computer does, which means
  • 00:47 you have to tell it exactly what you want the new fonts to be applied to.
  • 00:51 So, I've selected this first line.
  • 00:53 If you float your mouse up here, I'm on the Home ribbon.
  • 00:55 I have a font group.
  • 00:57 Within the font group, I have Bold and the tool tip tells me down below, Ctrl+B.
  • 01:01 It is teaching you to learn to use your keyboard.
  • 01:04 Italicize says, Ctrl+I.
  • 01:07 Underline says, Ctrl+U.
  • 01:09 You can either click buttons or use your keyboard, it is your personal preference.
  • 01:13 I'll go ahead and click on the B and then it wants me to color my text red,
  • 01:18 so I go find my Font Color and I choose Red and there we have it.
  • 01:23 I have Bold and Red applied.
  • 01:25 On the next one, Topic #2, I'm gonna go ahead and select with my arrow in margin.
  • 01:29 I'll just select the whole line, it's faster than a click and drag.
  • 01:34 And so now, I want to apply Italicize and Blue.
  • 01:37 I'll go ahead and click the I for Italicize and
  • 01:39 I'll change my Font Color to Blue.
  • 01:41 Notice how handy it was to have my minibar right there, so
  • 01:44 I didn't have to leave my screen and go up to the ribbon to use those same buttons.
  • 01:48 Let's go ahead and do the third one, Topic #3.
  • 01:51 Select the line, we're going to underline, it's teaching me Ctrl+U.
  • 01:56 And now I'm going to apply greens at the drop-down arrow and
  • 02:00 choose any Green color you would like.
  • 02:02 When you click off, of it you can see the results of all three of those.
  • 02:06 Down here, I'm gonna apply Strikethrough on this.
  • 02:09 Strikethrough my topic three.
  • 02:10 Now Strikethrough is simply putting a line through text.
  • 02:16 It is not on the mini bar, you have to come up to the font ribbon.
  • 02:19 To my knowledge, there is not a keyboard shortcut for this one.
  • 02:24 So I'll go ahead, this little ABC with a line through it, I'll go ahead and
  • 02:27 click on that.
  • 02:28 And sure enough, it puts a line right through that text.
  • 02:31 This is often used in legal offices, where they'll cross through certain text and
  • 02:36 then type in the new text, so that they never delete texts in a legal document.
  • 02:42 Now here, I want to apply Bold, Italicized underline.
  • 02:45 I'm gonna choose to use my keyboard this time.
  • 02:48 So Bold is Ctrl+B for Bold, italicized is CTRL+I, Underline is a Ctrl+U.
  • 02:55 It's simply the first letter of those three commands.
  • 02:58 When I click off of it, there you have it.
  • 03:00 Now in the two paragraphs down below, I wanna show you a feature called drop text.
  • 03:04 I'm going to first apply it only to the first letter of the paragraph,
  • 03:08 so I'm going to select the first letter.
  • 03:10 It is not on this little mini bar, it's not even on the Home ribbon.
  • 03:14 I have to click on the insert ribbon and way over here on the right-hand
  • 03:19 side in the text group, right above it says, Add a Drop Cap.
  • 03:23 A dropped capital letter and then we have two options on the list.
  • 03:30 So this first one, gonna drop it within the paragraph.
  • 03:34 In the second paragraph, I'm gonna highlight the A,
  • 03:37 I'm gonna come up here and I'm gonna drop this one in the margin.
  • 03:40 So the first letter actually moves to the margin.
  • 03:43 It's very interesting, used only in a casual storybook setting.
  • 03:49 I would never use it in a professional document, I would only use it if
  • 03:54 I was writing a story and wanted the first letter to look pretty.
  • 03:58 That's it for this lesson and we'll see you in the next video.

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